For workplace and academic teams, good beginnings are critical. A good beginning involves setting some norms, establishing initial roles, and planning for how the team will communicate and handle predictable situations such as conflict, disagreement, and perceived lack of productivity. Over the years and in contexts both academic and organizational, I’ve used team charters to structure a good beginning. Here are a couple that I’ve customized over the years. These are Word documents; feel free to customize them for your situation:
These work for virtual teams, also, with slight modifications to emphasize multiple methods/tools for communication and collaboration. Let me know if you find these useful or if you have suggestions for improvements that others might be interested in.
As part of a research class I’m co-teaching at the University of La Verne we are conducting some telephone interviews and need to record them. We need to generate quality digital audio and cannot spend very much because most if not all the students will be conducting the interviews.
So far, I have several options, one for telephones (either cellular or landline) and several for Skype.
Olympus TP-7
Option 1: For Telephones — Olympus TP-7 Telephone Recording Device plus a digital recorder. Here’s a description from the Olympus website: “The TP-7, telephone pickup, makes phone recording two sides of the conversation. Just plug the TP-7 jack into the “MIC” jack of your recorder, and put the earphone side into your ear. When speaking on the telephone, the TP-7 will capture both sides of the conversation for recording by your voice recorder.” Here’s the best price I found: Amazon $13.99, Note that this solution also requires a recorder, (around $50, I think) that has a mic input (3.5mm or 2.5mm, assuming the TP7 comes with the adapter as indicated on the Olympus website).
Option 2: For Skype — I make Skype to telephone calls regularly using my unlimited annual skype plan; but a monthly plan costs $3/month I think, or you could pay as you go for a couple of cents per minute (or less). But, Skype won’t record, so you’ll have to add an application that takes the Skype audio and saves it. I have used Pamela Recorder and have been moderately satisfied. It’s been a couple of months since I used it and I think it interrupted the call a couple of times, though I’m not sure Pamela caused it. Pamela Recorder costs around $21. Other call recorders for Skype are PrettyMay ($25) and CallBurner, listed on the Skype website. I’ve not used either, but CallBurner has an attractive 30 day free trial.
From New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education, chapter 13 (Design principles for mobile learning), Herrington, Herrington and Mantei discuss the eleven themes that emerged from their action research. In earlier chapters, they and other authors described 10 projects that were launched to integrate mobile devices (smart phones, iPods, etc) in teaching and learning. In this thirteenth chapter, they review and reflect on those projects. They call the following themes “design principles for mobile learning.”
Real world relevance: Use mobile learning in authentic contexts.
Mobile contexts: Use mobile learning in contexts where learners are mobile.
Explore: Provide time for exploration of mobile technologies.
Blended: Blend mobile and non mobile technologies.
Whenever: Use mobile learning spontaneously.
Wherever: Use mobile learning in non traditional learning spaces.
Whomsoever: Use mobile learning both individually and collaboratively.
Affordances: Exploit the affordances of mobile technologies.
Personalise: Employ the learners’ own mobile devices.
Mediation: Use mobile learning to mediate knowledge construction.
Produse: Use mobile learning to produce and consume knowledge.
I like the thorough, systematic approach to action research here. I also like the open publication of the results. I can use these results, discuss them with my students and with colleagues. Of these eleven principles, number 5, use mobile technologies spontaneously, reminds me of a photographers blog I read the other day (don’t remember where… have to search) in which he claimed that one of the strengths of phone cameras is that you have them with you for spontaneous pictures. So, the fact that a smart phone is usually carried about means that it is available for spontaneous use in spite of the picture, for example, not being of the highest quality.
I like my iPhone for that very reason… I can record a bit of audio, take a short video, upload a picture to Flickr, make a note in Evernote, wherever I am. Learning that takes place in the field, where we live and work, is embedded in that context. We are learning more and more about how learning is tied to context, and I think this makes mobile devices an intriguing prospect for learning.
For six weeks , participants can engage with ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by the four-day land-based TESOL convention and will allow a fuller development of ideas and themes of the convention or of professional interest in general……The sessions are free and open to all interested parties. You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate.
Have you ever heard of the spacing effect as related to memory and learning new information? Discovered by Ebbinghaus in the late 1800’s, it’s “one of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning,” the psychologist Frank Dempster wrote in 1988, (American Psychologist “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research.”). Yet, it’s almost universally ignored.
Basically, the idea is that forgetting something that has been memorized occurs at a predictable rate and that if reminders are properly spaced, over a period of time, then forgetting can be averted even as reminders are phased out after about 4 instances. Pretty cool, huh?
So, I’m reading this article from Wired Magazine (online of course) and it’s nice: Want To Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Well, it got me thinking about the benefits of the spread-out nature of much online learning. For example, if we have an 8 hour workshop to deliver, I think that it would be much more effective if it were spaced out over 2-6 weeks rather than all attempted in one day. One reason is the spacing effect. In the online class, you would have the opportunity to review and revisit periodically over time, whereas in the one day workshop, you would just rush through the experiences and/or information.
In the article, Gary Wolf writes about Piotr Wozniack and his SuperMemo software that is supposed to help people remember new information by using an algorithm to provide timely reminders until, ostensibly, the new information is stored in the long term memory. Here’s an image from the article that illustrates the timing of the reminders on the curve of forgetting. I like how that sounds, “The curve of forgetting.” It would be a good title for a book or poem. Anyway, here’s the graphic:
So Kara J (a.k.a. K-Jo) and I are doing a presentation at the Oklahoma ASTD conference next week. Our presentation is called “Building Successful Virtual Teams on a Shoestring” and we need your help. We’re going to do a top ten list and we’d like your help to make a video montage.
So, read our list below and when you’ve finished laughing, pick out one or two lines you like. (Feel free to make up your own if you’re so inspired.) Get out your webcam or video camera or super 8. Whatever records moving pictures. Film your amazing self delivering the line(s). Then e-mail the video to karajones86 at gmail dot com. Almost any film format will work, but try for .avi, .wmv, mpeg, mpg, or mp2. We’ll have the finished product at the conference AND I’ll post it here, too, after the conference (via YouTube, of course). (Come to our session. We’ll have candy! And Smencils! Seriously.) We’ll post it to youtube after the conference.
Cross your fingers and wait to see if you win the Quik Trip gas card in the random drawing at our session at the conference.
Top Ten Reasons to Work on a Virtual Team
You can attend web conferences in your pajamas and fuzzy slippers.
You won’t catch swine flu from that guy who comes into work with the 105 degree temperature.
You don’t have to share your cookies with anyone.
No one can see you rolling your eyes during conference calls.
With all the money your company saves on travel, it can afford to send your boss to that conference in Cancun: Innovations in Employee Appreciation.
You don’t have to sit next to that guy who only bathes once a month…for “political” reasons.
No one says “while you’re up, could you get me some coffee…a doughnut…pick up my lunch?” What am I, your personal assistant? Ask the intern!
It’s easier to ignore pick up lines from co-workers like “What’s an avatar like you doing in a Second Life like this?”
When something goes wrong, it’s always easier to blame someone whose cubicle isn’t next to yours.
You can work anytime, anywhere, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Athabasca University (AU) is doing a series of webcasts during Open Access Week, October 19-23. What is open access? “Open access is a movement towards open, public access to scholarly research results.” This is of great interest to me because a critical part of research is the dissemination of results and ensuing discussion. I don’t think our current model of scholarly publishing has been up to the task given the limited access journals only available to a select few who have access to them through an academic library with which they are affiliated. So, AU is offering these webinars:
Monday, October 19 – The Open Access Scholar
Tuesday, October 20 – Open Access Research Opportunities and Strategies
Wednesday, October 21 – Open Access Publication
Thursday, October 22 – Open Access Archives and Repositories
I just joined LearnTrends 2009 on Ning, the corporate learning Trends and Innovations Conference, a free online conference. Here’s my little badge. Cute, huh?
I’m looking forward to exploring and learning about innovations in corporate learning. In the Org Leadership doctorate program I teach in at University of Laverne, our theme this year is Innovation. Our book to read for launching the Innovations theme, that I just finished reading, is Tom Kelley’s Art of Innovation. So, I may be posting about innovation several times this coming school year. Anybody have any good resources on innovations?
As part of the Organizational Leadership Program I teach in, we have students do the Enneagram from the Enneagram Institute to help them get to know themselves and discuss with team members. It’s just one of several instruments we use in the program, but I wasn’t familiar with it (I just started in the program) so I paid my $10 to do the 145 item forced choice instrument, curious about what it would tell me. So, this is me, according to this instrument: Type 9 =27; Type 6 =19; Type 1 =18; Type 2 =18:
I’m Peter Williams, Assistant Professor of Organizational Leadership doctoral program, University of La Verne, and Stewardship Learning is my blog about learning. I chose the name because my goal is to help people and organizations be good stewards of their gifts and talents. I’ve been involved in developing and managing distance learning programs for several [...]more →
